CNN Reveals: Trump and His Storytelling About Venezuelan Terrorist Groups

The American outlet, quoting experts and former officials of the United States and referring to the background of what is called “Cartel de los Soles,” reported that the Trump administration’s aim in declaring this group — a covert network of government and military figures in Venezuela — as a terrorist organization appears to be to provide justification for targeting the infrastructure and assets of the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

According to Rokna, while the administration of Donald Trump continues to increase pressure on the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, experts and former government officials have raised concerns about the administration’s move to designate “Cartel de los Soles” as a foreign terrorist organization.

Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, announced yesterday in a post on X that the State Department intends to place this cartel on the list of terrorist organizations.

Since September, the US government has intensified the deployment of military forces in the Caribbean and operations against foreign vessels in international waters under what it calls “counter-narcotics efforts.”

CNN wrote in its report that experts argue this is not a formal, organized cartel comparable to criminal groups in Colombia and Mexico, and that the claim that Maduro leads it is exaggerated, although government involvement in drug trafficking does exist.

They suggested that this action would give the Trump administration a pretext for military measures against Venezuela.

In the same context, the US president told reporters that designating this cartel as a terrorist group could allow the US military to target Maduro’s assets and infrastructure inside Venezuela.

Does the “Cartel de los Soles” actually exist?

The American outlet wrote that experts believe the Cartel de los Soles — which in English means “Cartel of the Suns” — is used to describe a decentralized network of Venezuelan groups within the country’s armed forces who are connected to drug trafficking.

However, some argue that due to its lack of hierarchy and organizational structure, this group cannot be compared to traditional cartels that have been designated as terrorist groups by the United States. Others have even suggested that the group does not technically exist in the conventional sense.

Brian Finucane, a former attorney at the US State Department and an expert in matters related to war powers, said: “They aim to designate something that does not exist and is not a terrorist organization as a terrorist group.”

A former senior US government official likewise said: “Cartel de los Soles is a fabricated name to describe a special set of Venezuelan officials who play a role in drug trafficking through Venezuela. This cartel does not have the hierarchy or command-and-control structure of a traditional cartel.”

He added that the Trump administration’s claims are based on “incomplete information,” likely originating from the Defense Intelligence Agency or the Drug Enforcement Administration, which do not possess strong credibility compared with broader assessments of the intelligence community, or that the claims are “entirely political.”

In this regard, the Insight Crime think tank noted that the term emerged in the 1990s when Venezuelan generals and commanders who wore sun insignias on their shoulders came under investigation for drug trafficking and related crimes.

Jeremy McDermott, a co-founder and director of Insight Crime, told CNN that this so-called cartel “is not a traditional vertically structured drug-trafficking organization. It is, at least according to Insight Crime, a collection of generally separate cells positioned within the Venezuelan military.”

The US State Department says the Cartel de los Soles, along with the Venezuelan criminal organization “Tren de Aragua” and Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, is responsible for trafficking drugs to the United States and Europe.

Phil Gunson, a researcher with the International Crisis Group based in Caracas, previously told CNN that the Cartel de los Soles does not actually exist in and of itself. The term is a journalistic label created to refer to the involvement of Venezuelan officials in drug trafficking.

However, this does not mean that military forces or government officials are not involved in drug trafficking. Gunson explained: “The Colombian and Mexican cartels are present here. Drug shipments move along the Orinoco River and travel by air through secret airfields from Apure to Central America and elsewhere. None of this would be possible without direct intervention from high-ranking officials.”

What is the United States’ objective in designating “Cartel de los Soles” as a terrorist organization?

In the final section of the report, it was noted that this action, as Trump stated, could allow US military forces to target Maduro’s assets and infrastructure in Venezuela.

The United States has long treated counter-narcotics efforts as a law-enforcement matter, but Trump has increasingly sought to militarize these efforts and rely on traditional counterterrorism tools and authorities — an approach that, according to Finucane, is essentially a cover for the operation’s real objective, which is the removal of Maduro.